Chappie is a new film directed by Neil Blomkamp about a Robot originally programed to stop criminals in the crime filled streets of Johannesburg South Africa, and later reprogrammed with an artificial intelligence with the mind of a child.

It sounded like a good set up, but from how the trailers portrayed it and from and how it was pulled off, the overall feature was quite strange and disappointing. Chappie’s first flaws originate from its advertising. Watching the trailers and looking at the movie posters suggest that Chappie is about a future where cities are policed by robots who were built to oppress the citizens until a robot with a mind of a human comes to save humanity. Instead, it is a film about a robot scientist named Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), who builds a series of police robots for a weapons manufacturer owned Michelle Bradley, (Sigourney Weaver), that effectively reduce the crime in the city of Johannesburg. Until one day, one of the robots he was working on with a mind of a child got stolen by a group of gangsters that exploit him for naiveness and give him the name Chappie (Sharlto Cooper). Deon’s rival Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) uses the situation as a way to advance his own police robot creation. Even with the confusion caused by the advertising, Chappie could still be a good film just going straight into it without seeing any of the marketing, but sadly it is quite hateable.

The best aspect of Chappie is Chappie himself. He’s a downright lovable and memorable character, has the mind of a small and eagerly learning child that you feel and pity and want to see more of and is truly one of my favorite A.I. characters. Another positive for this film are the special effects and action scenes. Blomkamp’s movie has a budget much less than most blockbusters, but there’s times in this film where the computer effects looks very good they mix in with reality perfectly and the action scenes are amazing to watch.

The biggest negative about Chappie is his adoptive gangster father Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones). He’s just a bad human being who tricks Chappie into doing his dirty work and puts poor Chappie in bad situations one of which caused Chappie to lose an arm. Not realizing that Chappie can only think like a child until later in the film, Ninja uses this to his advantage to make Chappie help him rob a money truck to pay off a debt he owned to another gangster.

Overall, the best way the way to describe Chappie is a mish mash between good and bad. On one hand you have the character Chappie, who I can’t get enough of and the action scenes are amazing, and on the other hand you have hateable characters and a marketing campaign that felt liked a bait- and-switch. Chappie isn’t a bad film, but it is a flawed one. It’s worth the watch if you really want to see it but if you were only slightly interested, it’s a pass.